In the Land of Missed Opportunities

What will it take to break through the glass ceiling of education leadership in Massachusetts? The answer to that is still to be uncovered.

On Monday, the Board of Education met to make a final candidate selection for Massachusetts’ next Commissioner of Education. There were three candidates: Penny Schwinn, Angelica Infante-Green, and Jeffrey Riley. Two of the candidates, both women, were from “out-of-state”; Mr. Riley is a known quantity who has most recently been the Receiver of the Lawrence Public Schools.

One would think that with two women in the final three, there would be a fairly decent chance that the next Commissioner might be a woman, but that would mean ignoring what seems to be an unspoken qualification for education commissioner: “known local quantity”. Mr. Riley currently holds the position of Receiver in Lawrence Public Schools and has since that city’s schools were put under state receivership. He recently resigned the Receiver’s position and one wonders if that were serendipitous or by design.

By many accounts, Ms. Infante-Green’s interview was quite remarkable; she is a strong advocate of both bilingual and special education. As a parent of two bilingual children, one diagnosed with autism, she understands these two important issues intimately. While I disagree with some of her positions, she would have been a formidable advocate for bilingual students and for the differently-abled. To my thinking, the BESE members’ failure to select her as Masachusetts’ next Commissioner of Education is a lost opportunity: the opportunity to select the first woman to head the Commonwealth’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the first Latina to head Massachusetts’ education.

From each board members commentary, I think many of them supported Ms. Infante-Green’s candidacy, but could not, in the end make that selection. It felt as if many of the eight who selected Mr. Riley did so based on a perception of “earning” the position after his tenure in Lawrence. It was safer. So what we seem to have here is a safe, unimaginative selection; hopefully I will be proven incorrect about that last part.

Instead of breaking that glass ceiling, Massachusetts’ Board of Elementary and Secondary Education chose the safe, known, local candidate. In doing so, have state policy-makers missed an opportunity for greatness? I believe so. Missed opportunity indeed.